Juicy Meatloaf Fitting Revenge

July 3, 1985|By Robin Branch, Staff writer

The first complaint about a school cafeteria was recorded in 300 B.C., so we are able to pinpoint the invention of meatloaf pretty accurately.

Knowing when meatloaf was invented is one thing. Knowing why it was invented is something else again, but modern historians speculate it was the grisly revenge of an early feminist cafeteria worker who had been denied admission to law school, which sounds like a reasonable theory to me. And a fitting revenge, too.

In fact, modern couples, among whom alternating kitchen duty is part of the contract, have every reason to be grateful to the lady since meatloaf -- that is, the mere threat of its deployment -- has proven to be a great defense against actually serving on KP while still indicating complete willingness to do so.

(``Well, it`s my turn to make dinner, so here I go out to the kitchen to start a nice meatloaf.``

(``Please, I`ll make dinner. Why don`t you, um, let`s see, go to law school or something?``)

There have been many attempts to lose the recipe for meatloaf over the centuries, but it has proven to be a futile effort. Some say the recipe is handed down from one disgruntled generation to the next in a clandestine ceremony at dark of night beside an obscure graveyard just east of Karachi, but nobody`s ever been caught at it.

Your prime -- that is, your grayest, driest, most grease-saturated -- meatloaf is one that has been sitting on a steam table for four days, so naturally it has proven to be a very popular entree of institutional kitchens where food is prepared in advance for large numbers of people who are trapped on the premises at meal time

Oh, I don`t mean it`s a popular entree among the people trapped there. I mean it`s popular with the people who work in the kitchen.

Your average school cafeteria, for example, has long been meatloaf country, and generations of dubious children have been assured that no malice is intended.

Only recently has society come to admit the punitive value of meatloaf, simultaneously resolving the debate about whether prisons are intended to rehabilitate or to wreak vengeance on their customers, and giving new meaning to the concept of cruel and unusual punishment.

For starters, an innovative prison superintendent in the midwest let it be known that hard-case prisoners in his custody are confined to solitary confinement and served meatloaf for every meal until they reform. Every meal.

We`re talking meatloaf for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

We`re talking, in fact, el barfo, and some citizens were aghast to read of this inhumane treatment.

But other citizens said, ``Hey, they`re in there to get punished so let `em get punished,`` besides which the incorrigibles shaped up so quickly under this plan that arguments paled beside its effectiveness.

From there, it spread to other states and last week, evidently inspired by its success, the Michigan Corrections Commission improved upon it. A new policy -- in retaliation against unruly prisoners who hurl their food at the guards -- directs that the prisoners` entire meal be turned into meatloaf ``for less mess.``

Your fish, salad, gelatin and whatnot are all ground up, mixed with a meal batter and baked.

``Instead of giving them a tray of food, you give them a loaf,`` explained a prison spokesman, cheerfully. ``Three meals a day, you get this great, big loaf of all your food.``

No doubt it will work. No doubt it will become the policy of prisons nationwide.

No doubt anybody who embarks on a life of crime in spite of it will get off on grounds of insanity.